The push for a third lane to Richmond has sucked a lot of the air out of the conversation over Central Marin traffic. Cut-through drivers from San Francisco to Richmond are taking up all the space in Larkspur and causing horrific traffic. Thanks to induced demand, however, the third lane will likely fill up soon after it opens and we’ll be back to the same old story.

The most common way to think of traffic is as a gas that fills the space it’s given. No matter how much you build, there will always be traffic to fill it. This couldn’t be more apt for the situation faced by the Richmond Bridge.

Right now, for cut-through San Francisco-to-East Bay commuters, the Marin route is the fastest and cheapest way to get home. These drivers may have to deal with congestion and delays on Sir Francis Drake and 580, but it’s less than what they’d have to deal with on 80 and the Bay Bridge.

If we solve the problem and open a new lane on the Bridge, we’d reduce congestion in Marin enough that we could declare victory… until more people saw that it was a less-congested route than 80 and the Bay Bridge and switched. Either this area will return to its present levels of congestion, or the congestion will migrate to another bottleneck further south in the system, or some measure of both.

This is a much larger version of a problem faced by Los Angeles suburbs, where cut-through drivers, guided by their GPS, take surface streets to escape congestion on freeways. Delays become as bad on surface streets as on the freeway.

If congestion returns to Larkspur Landing, then the widening will simply buy us a few years of peace. If it causes another bottleneck, we’ll have bought some peace to Larkspur Landing at the cost of congestion elsewhere. If it’s both, then nobody wins.

Longer-term solutions depend on which outcome occurs; let’s look at each in turn.

Congestion comes back to Larkspur Landing only

If this occurs, the only real solution is to keep traffic on the freeway as long as possible by installing a proper 101-580 interchange in San Rafael. This interchange has been proposed before, but community opposition to a towering flyover connecting westbound 580 with southbound 101 scuttled the project. If the same opposition arises again, it might be worthwhile to simply remove that aspect and only do the eastbound 580 to northbound 101 aspect.

For now, at least, Caltrans ought to remove signs at the Sir Francis Drake Boulevard exit indicating that that is the way to 580.

Congestion occurs elsewhere in the system

The most likely location for congestion to occur is south of Marin City: on the Waldo Grade, Golden Gate Bridge, Lombard, or Van Ness, all of which are good targets for transit. Both Marin commute trips and local San Francisco trips are relatively easily served by transit. The upcoming Van Ness BRT line will make a big difference to that corridor, and an extension onto Lombard would help both GGT and Muni riders. Extending the HOV lanes onto the Waldo Grade by converting one of the through-lanes would speed transit and encourage carpooling, also helping alleviate congestion.

Alas, transit sometimes functions like adding more lanes: the amount of congestion stays constant even while the transportation capacity of a road to move people increases. At least we can comfort ourselves that fewer people will experience congestion from behind the wheel.

Congestion occurs both at Larkspur Landing and elsewhere

If this occurs, then planners will need to employ both solutions: add the interchange and improve transit.

The only permanent solution

The rub, of course, is that congestion is ultimately not a solvable problem without an economic downturn. Houston, Seattle, Los Angeles – all have tried to fix congestion by increasing roadway capacity, and none have succeeded. Anthony Downs, in his 1992 book Stuck in Traffic, said that widening a freeway doesn’t work thanks to what he called a “triple convergence”:

In response, three types of convergence occur on the improved expressway: (1) many drivers who formerly used alternative routes during peak hours switch to the improved expressway (spatial convergence); (2) many drivers who formerly traveled just before or after the peak hours start traveling during those hours (time convergence); and (3) some commuters who used to take public transportation during peak hours now switch to driving, since it has become faster (modal convergence).

The only way out is to view road space like a resource, and to price it as such. Jarrett Walker describes it thus:

Fundamentally, congestion is the result of underpricing. If you give away 500 free concert tickets to the first 500 people in line, you’ll get 500 people standing in line, some of them overnight. These people are paying time to save money. Current prevailing road pricing policy requires all motorists to act like these frugal concertgoers. Motorists are required to pay for road use in time, rather than in money, even though some would rather do the opposite and our cities would be safer and more efficient if they could. Current road pricing policy requires motorists to save money, a renewable resource, by expending time, the least renewable resource of all.

For the Bay Area, this would mean varying bridge tolls during the day so that congestion never builds up. Downs’ triple convergence would work in reverse.

With a rush hour 80 and Bay Bridge free of congestion, cut-through travel would be much less attractive for Contra Costa commuters. Those that still made the journey would likely not be enough to congest 101 at all.

According to a source trusted by The Greater Marin, Ross Valley Sanitary District (RVSD) Board Member Frank Egger wants to convert RVSD-owned land at Larkspur Landing from a 120-unit residential area to a 600-space parking lot, presumably to serve the Larkspur Ferry Terminal (LFT). To make this possible, Egger is pressing Larkspur officials to change the zoning on the RVSD parcel.

While it’s no great secret that LFT has a parking shortage, Egger’s idea is exceptionally foolish from almost any angle.

District Finances – RVSD has a crushing maintenance backlog and huge financial problems. Developing its residentially-zoned property for either sale or lease would provide a much-needed cash influx to the agency. While parking fees would generate some income to the district, it is significantly less than what 120 homes could bring in. Parking simply doesn’t generate the income development does, and that’s not to mention sales or property taxes to Larkspur.

Traffic – A new lot of 600 parking spaces would generate as many as 600 extra rush hour car trips. A development of 120 new homes would generate, at most, 240 rush hour car trips, though likely much less given the proximity to the ferry. If Egger is concerned about traffic, parking will be worse than homes.

Ferry Ridership – The new lot would generate up to 600 peak-period, peak-direction ferry trips, precisely the sort of trip the system has little capacity to accommodate. The 120 homes would generate up to 120 (more likely less than 100) similar trips. However, if built to attract visitors, the homes could complement future new development that would attract reverse-peak and off-peak trips. Golden Gate Ferry desperately needs people to commute from San Francisco to Larkspur Landing for the service’s sustainability.

Frank Egger has led the charge against the Fairfax Housing Element, especially against allowing the downtown to expand into areas now dominated by parking (an idea that even Dick Spotswood endorsed). From his perch on the RVSD Board, Egger is continuing to push a cars-first ideology. He wouldn’t phrase it this way, but it’s clear he’d rather build homes for cars instead of homes for actual people.

The Larkspur Landing Station Area Plan (SAP) is all the rage nowadays, and for good reason. People apparently don’t want to see any development or any changes to their community, and it looks like the development aspects of the plan are heading to the dustbin.

But there’s a myth Richard Hall, a leader in anti-development circles and writer of Planning for Reality, told me about yesterday on the IJ. He said the Larkspur SAP was necessary so SMART would get funding. Let’s fact-check this gem.

The claim

Under the Metroplitan Planning Commision’s (MTC) Resolution 3434, a commuter rail line like SMART can only get regional funding if it has an average of 2,200 housing units with a half-mile radius of its stations. MTC is in charge of dispersing regional funding from a variety of sources, and it’s entirely in its prerogative to disperse funds how it sees fit. Resolution 3434 is intended to promote transit-oriented development around train stations to limit sprawl out into the East Bay hills, farms, or elsewhere far from anything.

SMART, Hall claims, does not meet this requirement and needed to add 920 housing units around Larkspur Landing to qualify for MTC funding. Somehow Larkspur got involved, developed the plan, and now we’re headed for a train wreck of a plan.

The reality

There are a number of problems with this claim, highest on the list being that SMART has already qualified for regional funding under Resolution 3434. In fact, it was determined 4 years ago, in December, 2010, that SMART qualified for regional funding. SMART has since received funding and is using it to fund construction.

The finding was that SMART, excluding Corona Road and Novato North stations, had 15,251 housing units built or planned within a half-mile radius of its 7 planned stations. This is 99 percent of the required 15,400 units, and it was deemed sufficient.

Including Corona Road and Guernville Road, which was not the chosen plan MTC approved, there were 17,295 housing units out of 17,600 needed. It’s close, but not quite there.

Let’s say nothing happens in Larkspur except for a new station is built there. Let’s also say the planned Sonoma County Airport station is built and that SMART decides to open Corona Road. This means SMART will have 12 stations on tap, which means it needs at least 26,400 housing units within a half mile of its collection of stations.

Since I can’t find data on housing around either Novato North or the Sonoma County Airport, I’m going to say those have 0 units, just for the sake of argument. Adding up all the rest of the existing housing units gets us 19,796 housing units, well short of our needed 26,400.

However, San Rafael, Santa Rosa, and Petaluma have all completed station area plans. San Rafael plans for 272 more units downtown. Petaluma plans for 1,716 more units downtown and 523 more around its northern station. Santa Rosa plans for another 3,409 units around its downtown station and 2,680 around its northern station. This gets us to 28,396 total units, or 107 percent the needed amount.

A Rohnert Park SAP is also in the works, but it hasn’t been completed yet.

If there is a conspiracy afoot to get SMART to qualify for more regional funding through a Larkspur SAP, the conspirators are really bad at math. But if the author of Planning for Reality, a computer programmer, is similarly bad at math, perhaps we shouldn’t be so hard on them.

In sum: Hall’s claim is false.

What if there were no SAPs at all?

It’s important to note here that, when presented with this information, Hall shifted his tune both in email and online, choosing to criticize Sonoma for implementing SAPs and saying it was part of a bigger conspiracy for regional funding for construction. He also asked whether Larkspur Landing could have been included if no SAPs had been passed.

This question poses a highly improbable set of circumstances. First, Sonoma cities actually want to change, Rohnert Park especially. They believe their future lies in their downtowns, in the kind of places that Marin takes for granted. It is extremely likely they would have planned around their stations even if there were no MTC grant money, and likely would have planned even if SMART never existed.

Second, it was Larkspur, not SMART, that applied for SAP grant money. Anti-development activists believe MTC and SMART colluded to pressure Larkspur into taking that money against their will years before the Larkspur Landing station seemed possible. This was, they claim, to allow SMART to qualify for regional funding, even though it had already qualified for said funding.

But let’s indulge them. Adding Larkspur Landing would have dropped the number of housing units from 99 percent of qualifying to 94 percent. However, as link of regional significance, it would be extremely unlikely that MTC would have allowed this to disqualify SMART. It was still largely in line with Resolution 3434, and there would have been strong pressure to keep the funding.

But there were SAPs passed, and SMART is going to open with 10 stations, not 7. It can easily add Corona Road for 11, and it looks like Larkspur Landing will open in 2017 for 12 stations. But perhaps we should forgive SMART for building itself. After all, it was voters – a more insidious force than any regional body – who put them up to it.

The principal problem with Larkspur Ferry parking is really that it has poor connections to other modes, especially bus. Though there used to be a shuttle system in place, it didn’t do well and was cut years ago. While the Wave has taken a step toward reintroducing the shuttle, Golden Gate Transit has ignored regular bus service from the 29, as well as daytime and weekend trips to and from the ferry.

On the weekdays, what stands out to me is the very long connections for people coming from San Francisco. Though the 29 does pretty well for those heading to the ferry during the day – most require waits of only 10-15 minutes – it’s awful for connections from the ferry. Most connections are between 20-30 minutes, a couple leave only a minute to spare, and just a handful are in the sweet spot between 5 and 10 minutes. Optimizing the time points between the bus and ferry could boost ridership all on its own, without any need for new service.

Study the schedule yourself and you’ll see what I mean. And, if you’re a frequent ferry rider, print it out and keep it in your schedule book.

A high-density development is planned around a railroad station in Marin. There will be more than 150 housing units and a vast expansion of commercial space. Supported by the railroad, it will be an hour-long ride from the train station to the ferry to San Francisco. Behind it is a monopoly developer with unrivaled power in the state capital.

This is what we’d say if we were talking about downtown San Anselmo if it were being built today. We’d have similar conversations about each of our downtowns: new railroad station, new houses, new commercial development. The Northwestern Pacific Railroad, a subsidiary of Southern Pacific, was behind them all.

And yet these are the areas we value most in Marin: dense, walkable, quaint. Though some look at all of Marin and think it’s perfect as it is, with strip malls and downtowns and freeways all coexisting in one great smear of suburbia, I’ve always felt that it was these downtowns, and that history of building for accessibility to transit, that made Marin unique.

Opponents have done their best to paint the plan as a reckless regional power grab. It ignores congestion, they say. It’s part of a scheme to “urbanize” Marin. It is out of step with our traditions, our heritage, and our character as a San Francisco suburb.

Carol Brandt, in a December 1 Letter to the Editor, wrote that protecting Greenbrae was part of protecting our small-town character and our nature as a suburb.

While I understand the trepidation and concern people have regarding the Larkspur Station Area Plan, it is in the best traditions of Marin to build near a ferry and a rail station. To my ears, the urge to keep Marin as a car-oriented bedroom community defined by strip malls is at odds with those traditions.

Yesterday’s Marin Voice put it best: “Taking advantage of a new train station and a popular ferry terminal is literally built into the DNA of our towns and our county’s identity. It’s only natural we’d want to do again what our county’s forebears did a century ago.”

The traditional transit-oriented development our forebears built has served us extremely well. Not only is its centerpiece, the downtown, the focus of civic pride for every city and town in the county, but it has proven remarkably practical.

Our traditions give us the third-highest transit usage in the state and the second-lowest rate of people driving alone to work. Our traditions have literally saved lives, as Marin has less than half the traffic deaths per capita as than the national average. We are the original smart-growth county.

Dick Spotswood wondered if the transit-oriented development model could work in Marin. It does work, and Marin is the living, breathing proof that it doesn’t just work here. It thrives here. A progressive Larkspur Landing Station Area Plan is a chance for Marin to be itself again. To steal a motto, it’s time to Be Marin (Again).

The reexamination of the Larkspur Landing neighborhood is proceeding apace, and the city will start to consider the SMART Station Area Plan’s final documents tomorrow. However, the forces opposed to change in Marin are mobilizing opposition already, fueled by some ill-chosen words in the IJ and ideological misgivings about transit.

What is the Station Area Plan?

The station area plan (SAP) was put together by a citizen advisory committee over the course of about a year, with public meetings and community input the whole way. It studied the possibility of new office, housing, and retail development, and its possible impacts on traffic, parking, and transit. It described ways to ameliorate some of the existing problems and ways to ease the introduction of new development.

While it was described in the IJ as a housing plan for 900 new units in the Larkspur Landing neighborhood around the ferry terminal, this is inaccurate. It studied how up to that amount might accommodated in the neighborhood, but does not plan for this number. At best, it is a conceptual document with plans for infrastructure investment. A real housing plan would likely come as part of a new housing element or a broader zoning reform.

This is not a housing plan.

Why Larkspur Landing?

Larkspur Landing is a drivable bit of Larkspur centered around the once-eponymous Larkspur Landing Shopping Center, now called Marin Country Mart. It has the second-fastest-growing transit line in the county in the Larkspur Ferry and in all likelihood will soon be home to a SMART station. Plans for the Greenbrae Interchange will add a connection to the Highway 101 trunk line buses, giving easy access to the rest of Marin by transit.

It is a pass-through neighborhood. Commuters use it to travel to the Richmond Bridge, causing massive backups during the evening commute that spill onto northbound 101. The recently-approved Greenbrae Interchange Project will likely fix many of these issues, but fitting them into a broader plan to make the neighborhood a more livable one is important.

As well, Larkspur Landing is a good candidate for infill development. While the SAP is not a housing (or office, or retail) plan, it targets improvements with the idea of improving circulation and infrastructure in the neighborhood. It will be a transit and transportation hub, with easy access to the ferry, SMART, the region’s major trunk bus lines, and the North-South Greenway, our county cycling superhighway.

If the city ever decides it would be a good idea to add development or encourage new business to grow in that part of the city, the SAP’s studies of capacity and circulation at multiple population and job levels will be invaluable to that decision-making. Though that time is not now, advocates and opponents should know what they’re supporting and opposing.

How can we support a progressive Station Area Plan?

Opponents of any growth and change in Larkspur will fight for any mention of development in the SAP, believing it to be a “housing plan” and crippling its ability to improve the neighborhood. Supporters of a livable Larkspur should argue strenuously for maximizing the flexibility of the plan.

This means defending the land use portion of the SAP, which rests on the commonly accepted understanding that transit-oriented development promotes transit ridership. Though opponents have tried to tear down the concept, it holds true in the settings where it has been applied rigorously.

A recent study of rail-oriented development in New Jersey found that it is the density of bus stops – not proximity to rail or the newness of development – that is best correlated with transit use. The Larkspur SAP, by its proximity to the 25, 28, 29, and soon the 101 bus trunk, will fit that category.

The old-school TOD in Marin, oriented around buses, has led to the highest transit mode-share in the Bay Area outside of San Francisco, showing the truth of this concept in Marin’s suburban setting.

Arlington County, VA, dramatically increased its population in 40 years by growing only on the 5 percent of its land immediately next to transit. The result has been no increase in traffic. Though its densities are more suited to the Peninsula than Marin, there’s no reason for the model to fail on a smaller scale in the Marin setting.

Most importantly, the real traffic savings in transit-oriented development isn’t in moving trips from car to transit; it’s from moving trips from car to foot and bike. Not every trip can (or should) be so moved, but well-designed places give people the opportunity for productive use of their feet. If you lived in downtown Larkspur, your kids could walk to school; you could walk to get a haircut, get coffee, get a book, get new pet food, or do some light grocery shopping. Doing each of those trips on foot saves a mile or two from the roads and gives that road space to people who need or want to travel further.

A progressive SAP will give Larkspur the flexibility to build this way if it chooses but will not lock the city into this way of thinking if it feels the shopping center model is better than its downtown.

The SAP should aim for the best transportation future for the area: ameliorate traffic, promote the ferry-SMART connection, promote strong 101 bus connections, activate Sir Francis Drake and Larkspur Landing Circle as walking and biking streets, and examine ways to bring more counter-commuters to the ferry terminal.

What are the logistical challenges in Larkspur Landing?

A few of the challenges faced by Larkspur Landing are not within the scope of the SAP.

The biggest is the ferry’s legal capacity limits. At the moment, it may only do 42 catamaran trips per day, and it’s currently doing 37, not including ballgames. This is a problem that needs to be resolved, but it can only be done through a revised environmental impact report on the high-speed catamarans.

The next is traffic, which will be addressed by the Greenbrae project. Unfortunately, the project as passed didn’t include much benefit analysis, so it’s unknown at the moment how much traffic will be ameliorated by the bus, bike, and road improvements.

The last is the location of the SMART station, which is currently too far from the ferry terminal. Doing it right would mean moving the station either to the Marin Country Mart parking lot, which has space to spare, or to the ferry terminal itself. The SAP should keep this option open and encourage the SMART board to change its station site.

If you go (and you really should), the IJ published these details:

Larkspur will host a workshop about the Draft Station Area Plan and Station Area Plan Draft Environmental Impact Report from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 400 Magnolia Ave.

The workshop will explore the major land use policies, plans for various types of transportation and open space and recreation opportunities for the area.

From 4:30 to 5:25 p.m., an open house will be held with informational displays for viewing and opportunities for conversation with project consultants and city staff. From 6 to 7:30 p.m., there will be a formal presentation and question-and-answer session.

In a stroke of good news, GGT will begin charging $2 for parking at the Larkspur Ferry Terminal (LFT) on January 6.

The charge is part of a progressive plan to manage access at LFT. Last year, there were few ways to get o LFT without a car, but the parking lot filled up after 8:30am, leaving mid-day travelers stranded and depressing ridership.

GGT tackled this high demand by implementing a shuttle bus in Ross Valley, called the Wave, to give people an alternative to driving. With the $2 charge, GGT is also trying to encourage people to use the shuttle or bike. In short, rather than try to boost parking supply by building garages, GGT is trying to reduce parking demand.

It’s a smart plan. Travel from LFT is highly “peaked,” with a lot of people taking the ferry for commutes to and from San Francisco but hardly anyone taking it in the middle of the day. Boosting the parking supply would further overwhelm those morning ferries.

It’s cheaper to encourage people to take the bus to and from the ferry or to and from the city with a parking charge. The result is a parking lot with space for afternoon riders and essentially the same number of commute riders.

GGT staff should monitor the situation carefully and establish a goal of a certain percentage of spaces available after the morning rush. With such a goal in mind, the Board could raise or lower the parking charge as needed to attain that goal.

The next big thing for Marin-San Francisco LFT riders are new bus pads under the 101 overpass at Sir Francis Drake. Approved as part of the Greenbrae Interchange Project, the pads will mean travelers on the 101 trunk line routes (17, 36, 70, 71, 80, and possibly 101) will be able to easily transfer to the ferry, unlike the current trek from Paradise Drive. SMART will likely come soon after that.

Combined with the parking charge, LFT will be able to accommodate more years of booming ridership growth and allow it to become the all-day service the Sausalito ferry is. Though it will bump up against the limits of its ferry infrastructure eventually, that is a far better problem than being limited by a parking lot.

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